Mobile Learning

Following my discovery of the Mobile Barcode extension for Firefox, I’ve had a bit of a rummage around for other extensions for the fantastic Firefox browser that support mobile learning.

• MoblogUK Extra: Adds a search to the front page, inline tag prompts and auto linking to moblogUK.
• XHTML Mobile Profile: allows your Firefox browser to view WAP webpages designed for mobile phones (MIME-type vnd.wap.xhtml+xml). Useful for mobile content developers. Another extension, WML browser, would also be useful for this purpose.
• Small Screen Renderer: “Turn your Firefox into a cellphone browser. It adds a new menu entry ‘Small Screen Rendering’ under the View menu. Just select it to have the page you are currently browsing redisplayed in a cellphone style.”
• Unplug and/or VideoDownloader: Allow you to save embedded videos from YouTube, etc, to your computer for later viewing. DownloadHelper has similar video downloading functionality, as well as built-in image downloading support.
• TinyURL Creator: Creates a short URL for a web page from within the browser, so that it can be more easily input into a mobile device – similar to WAPUrl.
• GMiF (Google Maps in Flickr): enables mapping of geotagged (location specified) images in Flickr, using Google Maps. GeoURL is another extension that can be used to locate web pages relating to a geographical location – useful for developing location-based m-learning.
• Podcast Search Toolbar: Searches over 10,000 podcasts, and has an integrated internet radio feature to listen to audio online.
• Pix2Fone: Allows you to save any web image or mp3 sound file for later retrieval via WAP on your mobile phone, in a mobile-optimised format.

technorati tags:sms, mlearning, m-learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile, learning, clcommunity, talo

The Guardian reports on the success of SMS-based answer services in the UK. The Guardian itself, as well as Google, Yahoo, and askmenow.com all run their own versions of services that allow questions to be SMS-ed in for answering; askmenow.com charges nothing for automated answers, or just US 49c for it premium service.

“But Britain seems to be leading with premium text messaging. Sarah
McVittie, CEO of 82ASK (which corresponds to the keys 82275 on a mobile
keyboard), reckons it has answered a million questions since 2003 and
is expanding at 20% a month largely by word of mouth. It employs 120
“textperts” including PhD students who get paid £6 to £10 an hour, or
by the answer… It is about the “instant gratification of getting right answers
immediately” in a way that is easier than opening a mobile browser.
Since mobile page impressions have been static for years, she thinks
they have a window of opportunity to change the way people get
information. [emphasis added -L]

Even bigger is AQA (issuebits.co.uk, shortcode 63336), which launched
in April 2004 and claims to have answered 3m questions and now deals
with 10,000 a day. It has 550 researchers, all working from home, who
are paid 30p a question, with the rest divvied up among operator,
government and the company. Paul Cocerton, one of three ex-Psion people
behind it, claims they often take less than a minute to answer. Like
82ASK, they have access to a bank of past questions (those are the
quick ones) as well as mainstream sources. He claims his researchers
don’t use Google much because it just takes too long. The slowness of
search engines, he adds, is one of the reasons for AQA’s existence, and
that 85% of queries are answered in five minutes. Questions range from
getting pink shoes in Bath to personal relationships. One obsessive
asked 20 questions on car headlights.

I tested them both by asking how many people were alive compared with
all who had ever lived. 82ASK came back within five minutes stating
that an estimated 106.4bn people have lived since humans appeared, so
5.8% of all people ever born are alive today. AQA came back with a
similar answer after 22 minutes. On Monday morning – real query this
one – I asked both to find me a hotel in Ireland within half an hour of
Rosslare en route to Westmeath. Both gave me two hotels with embedded
telephone numbers within 15 minutes but 82ASK was two minutes quicker
and gave prices as well.”

I’m not yet aware of a commercial mobile learning/information service like these operating in Australia, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out…

technorati tags:sms, mlearning, m-learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile, learning, askmenow, textmessage, testing, clcommunity, talo, networkedlearning

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